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Hope and courage lost

A letter by Malcolm Katz

Last week in this ‘green and pleasant land,’ and with a single stroke of the pen [as it were], all but 13 extraordinarily courageous members of The Commons surrendered any hope for a Parliament following their own Act in holding themselves subject to a five-year, fixed term of office, with the Conservatives calling a snap election ostensibly in order to bolster their chances for a Brexit with nearly 30 other members of the EU within a two-year period of time [but more likely than not, intended to white-wash their political chicanery in roughly 20 seats, last June], and with the Labour and Liberal Democratic Parties and others losing the courage to oppose that decision under the pretext of picking up (perhaps) a few seats and discarding any semblance of implementing a social and a just agenda [but with the particular and adverse consequences for the continuation of the NHS in its present form and the freedom of movement guaranteed for both EU citizens and non-EU citizens alike in this country and throughout the rest of Europe to live and work where they choose to do so].

In doing so, the major parties have risked wide-scale unemployment (as companies and their employees move elsewhere); the major parties have risked the shrinking of the United Kingdom through the loss of Scotland and elsewhere; as a result, it is about time that the major parties recognise the need for a written Constitution to prevent the loss of hope and courage from ever occurring in the future; but most importantly than any of the above, the major parties have failed to protect the rights and the liberties of the people on all sides of the political spectrum to whom those rights and liberties have been entrusted, only to be cast away without so much as any meaningful debate in The Commons on the efficacy of such snap elections [let alone, their legality], and at the whim of both the majority in power who meet in closed-door meetings and the silent majority of all those who quite frankly have been left out of the political process.

For those reasons, a pox on all their houses, and the undersigned would welcome a Citizens’ Assembly and alliances with other groups of similar-minded Citizens for the purpose of enshrining into positive law the fundamental rights and privileges enjoyed by the people in other EU countries under their own written Constitutions. That is, after all, the quintessence of democracy and why so many populist movements have sprung up both here in this ‘green and pleasant land,’ and elsewhere throughout Europe.